Top 10 Healthcare IT News stories of 2016, so far: Ransomware, MACRA, Epic and more

With 2016 already half over, it's time to look back at the stories that most resonated with Healthcare IT News readers these first six months of the year. Taken together, they represent many facets of a fast-changing industry: policy changes and security challenges, frustrations with technology and aspirations for what it can help accomplish.

Meaningful use will likely end in 2016, CMS chief Andy Slavitt says

In January, acting CMS administrator Andy Slavitt made waves across the industry when he alluded, in a speech at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, that meaningful use – which for better and worse has shaped health information technology for more than six years – would soon "effectively over and replaced with something better." With the MACRA proposed rule soon unveiled in April, that looks to be the case for physician practices. What happens with regard to hospitals' participation in MU remains to be seen. FULL STORY

The big HIMSS16 gallery: Best photos from the weeklong healthcare conference

Exec quits over patient safety concerns weeks before Epic go-live; Hospital fires back that EHR will be safe

On March 4, Charles Perry, MD, resigned as chief medical information officer at New York's Queens and Elmhurst Hospital Centers, part of NYC Health + Hospitals, protesting that the health system's planned April 1 Epic EHR rollout was being rushed, and could jeopardize patient safety. A spokesperson from NYC Health + Hospitals countered, telling Healthcare IT News: "The idea that we’d jeopardize patients to meet a deadline is simply wrong – if a patient safety issue is identified, the project will stop until it is addressed." FULL STORY

To the distress of many, ransomware become a depressing fact of life for hospitals and healthcare providers in 2016. In February, a cyber attack against Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center – during which the hackers locked data, demanded a booty of $3.4 million in Bitcoin and forced caregivers to depend on handwritten notes and faxes – was arguably the first shot across the bow for healthcare. FULL STORY

Judy Faulkner: 'Good software is art'

In an interview with Healthcare IT News Editor-at-Large Bernie Monegain at HIMSS16, Judy Faulkner, the normally soft-spoken CEO of Epic, waxed rhapsodic about the beauty of well-coded EHRs. "Code is three things," she said. "One, it's mathematics. So, it's millions and millions of lines of math. Two, it is a language. You really have to think in it. … It has to be art too; good software is art." FULL STORY

In April, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that it had terminated its $14 million electronic health record contract with Epic. Officials had determined there were 'significant risks' to continuing rollout, it said, and had concerns about a viable final product. In a response on its website, Epic offered its side of the story: "There were many unusual issues which were not initiated by Epic. These included extensive hardware procurement delays, changes in third-party vendors with subsequent re-contracting mid-install (and) a change in data center … each of which caused significant delays. The system was finally scheduled to go live October 2015 but, for reasons we do not know, in September 2015 the Coast Guard decided not to continue the contract." FULL STORY